“Well, I daresay we shall meet to-morrow,” said Anne, disappointed. She was reluctant to let Rachel go, wanting to find an excuse for delaying her own arrival at the vicarage.
“Let’s go to the feast to-morrow and ride on the roundabout together,” she said.
Rachel lifted a pale face and gazed at her angrily; two tears ran unheeded down her cheeks and she answered with indignation.
“No, you won’t be stopping here long”; then, without waiting for an answer or to say good-bye, she ran back on to the village green. When she had gone a little way she dropped into a walk and soon stopped. She was not in the mood to rejoin her companions; watching the gipsies would no longer interest her, and as soon as Anne had turned the corner Rachel slowly followed in her footsteps.
The rays of the sun were horizontal, and the last strip of turf by the Broad Ditch was striped with the shadows of the elms, the darkest and the most brilliant greens; on the water a crowd of ducklings were swimming eagerly in all directions, in and out of the sunlight; in another half-hour the dew would begin to fall and the little owls would come out to hoot at the cats. Anne turned to look back. Behind her the lower branches of the elms were already in shadow, their tops shone in the sunlight; between the trunks she could see a glimpse of the village green beyond, with the yellow painted roof of a roundabout. There was a silence and suddenly Anne gave a long sigh, a sigh of happiness.
“I am happy now and completely at peace. I was never happy here before, but I am now, for I am free. The opinion of neighbours cannot weigh on me, for my life is full and happy and satisfied. Each day is rich and full, and though summer passes it returns again. There are better years coming than any of the years which are past, and the leaves will always drop in November and spring afresh in May.”
The figure of Rachel came into view, and Anne saw the child stop.
“Well, now I must see my father,” she said to herself, shrugging her shoulders, a trick she had caught from Grandison; then she turned towards the vicarage, and swinging her arms and shaking her bare head, she walked forward. From a distance the vicarage was black against the sunset, but as she came abreast of it, she saw it clearly, the old familiar building, strangely like a Noah’s ark, with a chimney at each end. But the moment that she glanced at it Anne stopped short. The vicarage—it had been burnt! It was a ruin. But the hollyhocks were standing in full flower; the roses on the wall were not scorched—and Anne could see that there had been no fire: all that had happened was that the windows had been taken out: there was no glass: there were no window-sashes.
Wire netting had been nailed across each of the down-stair windows, but the bedroom windows were open spaces. Otherwise there was little change; the front lawn had been mowed recently, the path had been weeded, and round the windowless house all the rose-trees were in bloom.
Anne walked slowly up the pathway, noticing everything and reassured by a hundred little details. The box-trees had been clipped. On the doorstep she paused, uncertain whether to try the door-handle or to ring the bell.